I have now been clinically depressed for thirteen months. I’ve been living with depression a lot longer than that but, in May of last year, everything spiralled and I was diagnosed with clinical depression for the second time. So I know my depression pretty well now and there are a few differences between those two states. One is the presence of hope: while living with depression, it’s a constant battle between my depression and the hope that things will change and get better. But sometimes that hope just disappears and the depression takes over. That’s when things start to get really bad. Another difference is the ability to cope; when my depression is particularly bad, I feel completely overwhelmed on a daily basis and devastated on a weekly one. I feel like one more impact and I’ll never recover.

I’ve been in what feels like the lowest place I’ve ever been for the past month. I wish I could describe it but I don’t know if I can; I don’t know if there are words that accurately capture that feeling. It’s like that feeling after you’ve had blood taken, after they’ve pulled the needle out, and your arm hurts in a way you’ve never really felt before but it’s everywhere. It’s like you’re drowning inside your own body. It’s like having a black hole in your chest that’s sucking everything in, leaving you aching and empty. It’s like all of those things and none of them at the same time.

But recently there’s been a slight shift. It’s so slight that saying ‘I feel better,’ feels like a gross over exaggeration and fills me with anxiety. But it is there and that’s really frightening to me. I’ve spent weeks feeling like I’m suffocating, like I can’t possibly survive feeling like this for another minute, but now that that’s not the case, I’m honestly terrified. As miserable as the depression is, ‘better’ is unknown. And scary. As much as I wanted to feel anything else, being depressed is somehow safe and… comforting is the wrong word, but hopefully you know what I mean. It’s clear. I know where the edges are, how it feels. In some ways, being depressed is easier because it’s familiar. I know it sounds weird but it’s like nothing can hurt me because everything hurts already. So, if I step out of that, it opens me up to really feeling hurt again and that is really, really scary.

But what if I’m not ready? Being depressed takes up so much space within me. What if I’m not ready to process everything that I’d have to if that space wasn’t being monopolised by the depression, if it was being filled with more life than I’ve had up until now? That’s overwhelming. I feel so raw and so fragile. What if I’m not strong enough? What if something happens and suddenly I’m crashing down even lower than before? I’m not sure I could survive that. I feel like a fractured windowpane that will shatter if it takes one more hit.

I feel like a little like I’m being dragged into ‘better’ regardless of how I actually feel. I do feel better physically: the brain fog has receded significantly, I don’t feel so numb, to the world and my own emotions, and so on. I’ve even had flashes of future plans, like going to the gym and learning how to bake something new; I haven’t had thoughts like that in a long time. But despite all of that, I don’t feel better mentally so it’s confusing and overwhelming and stressful. I know that that kind of change takes time, conscious processing, and most likely therapy, but that’s hard to remember when I’m feeling so overwhelmed by anxiety.

And part of that anxiety is this suffocating feeling that something bad is about to happen. This is something I’ve struggled with for years (it’s on my list to write about) and although I know it’s completely irrational, it doesn’t feel that way when I’m in it. It feels completely logical. A good thing happened and so a bad thing must happen to balance it out. I dared to want more than I already had and so the universe must punish me for it. When I write it out, I can see how ridiculous it is but it’s how I FEEL. It’s like the instinct that you’re in danger: it’s that strong. You can’t just ignore it. I want to write more about this in the future because it’s important and complicated and distressing.

This is all really overwhelming and scary. And it’s really confusing to suddenly feel like I don’t want to get into a better space after desperately wanting it for so long. It’s really weird when your physical emotions and your mental emotions don’t match, if that makes any sense. I don’t really feel like I understand it so I end up feeling like I don’t want to tell other people because they might assume that it’s as simple as feeling better and therefore expect more from me, more than I’m capable or feel capable of giving. This is a learning curve and I seem to be moving through it very quickly but also very slowly. It’s a mess. I’m a mess. Thank you for sticking with me through this very ramble-y description of it.

Living with depression is hard. Yes, I know, I’m stating the freaking obvious. But I want to write about something that doesn’t come up that often, in my experience at least. And when I say ‘living with depression’, I mean going through repeated bouts of depression over a period of time. I’m not diminishing the difficulty of going through an isolated experience; I just want to point out something specific to the continued one.

Being at your lowest is excruciating but it’s simple, when it comes to the complexity of emotions. Depression is overwhelming; it blots out everything. The world is one colour. But as you start to move out of that place, it becomes emotionally confusing. A lot of you is still depressed but there’s also a part of you that’s trying to move forward. And that conflict is exhausting. Your emotions are constantly clashing and that takes up so much energy.

I recently landed in the lowest place I’d ever been. I feel like I say that every time but I know that this was the worst I’d ever felt. I had a very emotionally traumatic meltdown – again, the worst one I’ve had – and ended up sitting in the middle of my local park, crying my eyes out at eleven o’clock at night. And it was that heaving kind of crying where it feels like it’s coming from a place inside you that’s deeper than physically possible. It was horrible and when I woke up the next morning, I was in such a deep depression that I couldn’t do anything. I literally couldn’t. I lay in bed all day, staring at the wall. I felt completely hopeless. I couldn’t see the point in anything. There was no point in trying to be happy, in trying to do anything, because the only real thing is misery.

It took days to start functioning again (move around, interact with people, eat, etc), but I was still firmly locked in that point of view. I couldn’t see the point of anything but the oppressiveness started to lift and other emotions started to creep in. I was able to smile again and sometimes I’d even laugh and that was really hard because I still felt so hopeless. It felt wrong. I didn’t feel ready to be okay.

I feel like I have two levels of mood, my surface mood and my inner mood. The labels speak for themselves but I want to elaborate a bit further. My inner mood is what I feel at the centre of myself (my automatic thought was to name it my ‘real’ mood but I know the surface mood is real too – please bear with me: words are hard!) and at the moment, that is depressed. If I had to choose one emotion to associate with myself, it would be a sad one, like depressed or disheartened. My surface mood reacts to outside stimuli: good weather, spending time with people I like, a new episode of my favourite TV show. Those sorts of things do create spikes in my mood. It can be really easy to brush those moments off because they feel so wrong when I’m depressed. But they’re both real and both deserve to be recognised. That’s why I like the two levels of mood idea. By having two levels, one emotional reaction doesn’t invalidate another. I can feel really depressed and kind of okay – even optimistic – at the same time. It’s too simplistic to think that we only feel one emotion at a time but when they’re so opposite, it just makes the whole thing more difficult, more confusing, more exhausting.

The only time the two seem to synchronize is when I’m really, really depressed. It sounds sad when I put it like that but right now, it’s the truth. I know that my surface mood can change so hopefully the inner mood can too. Hopefully I’ll reach a point where it’s not so low.

Since taking the Venlafaxine, I’ve felt different. I’ve felt a little bit lighter, mentally and emotionally. In some ways this is better but in some ways it’s not. Depression is such a heavy feeling but now I feel a bit like I’m floating away. I feel kind of lost, or like I’ve lost something really important. In a weird way, I miss feeling depressed. No, that’s not right. I don’t miss it, but I feel kind of lost without it. And feeling like that makes me very anxious.

Objectively I understand why I feel this way: I’ve spent a lot of time feeling depressed. It’s familiar. It’s certain. It’s a world where everything is in focus with clear and sharp edges. Now the edges are fuzzy. I feel like I don’t know who I am or what I’m doing. And emotionally, I’m finding that really hard to get my head around.

I know who I am when I’m depressed. Those emotions overwhelm me, they define me. Depression takes over my personality, or becomes the biggest part of it. It affects everything. It’s like depression takes up all that space. But now, there’s suddenly all this space that wasn’t there before. It feels a bit like when you stand in the middle of a really massive empty room. It’s quiet. It’s cold. It makes you feel so small and lonely. And if I look at myself in that big white room, I don’t know who I am. I don’t know if I’m optimistic or pessimistic. I don’t know if I’m a good person or a bad person. I don’t know if I’m loud or quiet. I know some little things but not the big things.

I do recognise the opportunity here, the opportunity for things to be different: to fill the room with new things. That thought is both thrilling and terrifying. But I’m not sure I’m there yet: I’m still pretty overwhelmed by how big this room is, how empty it is. I don’t know where to start.

I’ve thought a lot about identity, both mine and in general. It’s something I’ve struggled with for a long time and something I want to write more about. But I think your identity is made up of the things about you that don’t change, the fundamental aspects of your personality. I don’t know much about myself but I do know that I’m very sensitive. I’ve always been sensitive and I can’t see it ever changing. So I guess that’s a part of my identity.

I’m not sure my depression is gone but I’m not drowning in it anymore. And that’s scary. I’m so used to it that I’m not sure who I am without it. When I’m depressed, that big white room is so dark that I don’t know that all that space is there, so I don’t even know the room is that big. But now I know it’s there and it’s very compelling. I keep turning it over in my mind. As I said, I know who I am when I’m depressed. I want to know who I am when I’m not. So I guess that starts now. It’s a brave new world.

About Me

Hey! I’m Lauren Alex Hooper. Welcome to my little blog! I write about living with Autism Spectrum Disorder, as well as a number of mental health issues. I’m also a singer-songwriter so I’ll probably write a bit about that too.

My first single, ‘Invisible,’ is now available on iTunes and Spotify, with all proceeds going to Young Minds.

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